And more of charity in that cloister burns.[98]
There is nothing more wholesome or less pursued by compunction. To mingle our emotions with fellowship enlarges and soothes them; even resentment on behalf of us is less rankling than on behalf of only me, and there is something cheerful in suffering wrong in friendly company. One of the most obvious things about selfishness is the unhappiness of it, the lack of imaginative expatiation, of the inspiration of working consciously with a vast whole, of “the exhilaration and uplift which come when the individual sympathy and intelligence is caught into the forward intuitive movement of the mass.”[99] Fellowship is thus a good kind of joy in that it is indefinitely diffusible; though by no means incapable of abuse, since it may be cultivated at the expense of truth, sanity and individuality.
Everything that tends to bring mankind together in larger wholes of sympathy and understanding tends to enlarge the reach of kindly feeling. Among the conditions that most evidently have this effect are facility of communication and the acceptance of common principles. These permit the contact and fusion of minds and tend to mould the group into a moral whole.
In times of settled principles and of progress in the arts of communication the idea of the brotherhood of man has a natural growth; as it had under the Roman Empire. On the other hand, it is dissipated by whatever breaks up the moral unity and makes human interests seem inconsistent. Not only war, but all kinds of destructive or unregulated competition, in which the good of one party appears to be a private good gained by the harm of another, are reflected in the mind by unkindly feeling. What human nature needs is—not the disappearance of opposition, which would be death—but the suppression of destructive forms, and the control of all forms by principles of justice and kindness, so that men may feel that the good survives.
As regards the bearing of contemporary conditions upon the spirit of brotherhood, we find forces at work so conflicting that it is easy to reach opposite conclusions, according to the bias of the observer.
The enlargement of consciousness has brought a broadening of sentiment in all directions. As a rule kindly feeling follows understanding, and there was never such opportunity and encouragement to understand as there is now. Distant peoples—Russians, Chinese and South Sea Islanders; alienated classes—criminals, vagrants, idiots and the insane, are brought close to us, and the natural curiosity of man about his fellows is exploited and stimulated by the press. Indeed, the decried habit of reading the newspapers contributes much to a general we-feeling, since the newspaper is a reservoir of commonplace thought of which every one partakes—and which he knows he may impute to every one else—pervading the world with a conscious community of sentiment which tends toward kindliness.
Even more potent, perhaps, is the indirect action of communication in making it possible to organize all phases of life on a larger scale and on a more human basis; in promoting democracy and breaking down caste. Under a democratic system the masses have means of self-expression; they vote, strike, and print their views. They have power, and this, at bottom, is the source of all respect and consideration. People of other classes have to think of them, feel with them and recognize them as of a common humanity. Moreover, in tending to wipe out conventional distinctions and leave only those that are functional, democracy fosters the notion of an organic whole, from which all derive and in which they find their value. A sense of common nature and purpose is thus nourished, a conscious unity of action which gives the sense of fellowship. It comes to be assumed that men are of the same stuff, and a kind of universal sympathy—not incompatible with opposition—is spread abroad. It is realized that “there are diversities of gifts but the same spirit.”
On the other hand, our life is full of a confusion which often leaves the individual conscious only of his separateness, engaged in a struggle which, so far as he sees, has no more relation to justice and the common good than a dog-fight. Whether he win or lose makes, in this case, little difference as to the effect upon his general view of life: he infers that the world is a place where one must either eat or be eaten; the idea of the brotherhood of man appears to be an enervating sentimentalism, and the true philosophy that of the struggle for existence, which he understands in a brutal sense opposite to the real teaching of science. Nothing could be more uncongenial to the we-feeling than this view, which unfortunate experience has prepared many to embrace, taking from life, as it does, its breadth and hopefulness, the joy and inspiration of working in a vast and friendly whole.
Probably most of us are under the sway of both of these tendencies. We feel the new idealism, the sweep and exhilaration of democracy, but we practise, nevertheless, a thrifty exploitation of all the private advantages we can decently lay our hands on; nor have we the moral vigor to work out any reconciliation of these principles. Experience shows, I think, that until a higher sentiment, like brotherly kindness, attains some definite organization and programme, so that men are held up to it, it is remarkably ineffective in checking selfish activities. People drift on and on in lower courses, which at bottom they despise and dislike, simply because they lack energy and initiative to get out of them. How true it is that many of us would like to be made to be better than we are. I have seen promising idealists grow narrow, greedy and sensual—and of course unhappy—as they prospered in the world; for no reason, apparently, but lack of definite stimulation to a higher life. There is firm ground for the opinion that human nature is prepared for a higher organization than we have worked out.
Certainly there is, on the whole, a more lively and hopeful pursuit of the brotherhood of man in modern democracy than there ever was, on a large scale, before. One who is not deaf to the voices of literature, of social agitation, of ordinary intercourse, can hardly doubt this. The social settlement and similar movements express it, and so, more and more, does the whole feeling of our society regarding richer and poorer. Philanthropy is not only extending, but undergoing a revolution of principle from alms to justice and from condescension to fellowship. The wealthy and the educated classes feel, however vaguely, that they must justify their advantages to their fellow men and their own consciences by making some public use of them. Gifts—well meant if not always wise—to education, science and philanthropy are increasing, and there was never, perhaps, a more prevalent disposition to make unusual mental acquirements available toward general culture.